Credit: vdcoleman.wordpress.com
We have entered the “anything goes” phase of religious exemptions.
As I described last week, newly Republican state legislatures (and Congress, of course) are eager to carve out ever-larger exemptions from civil rights laws and laws governing contraception and abortion. Now they are being written into law.
In the wake of Hobby Lobby, activist lawyers are getting busy too. What are the boundaries of religious exemptions? How much of a “pass” do I get, if I claim a religious justification?
Take the case of Herx v. Diocese of Fort Wayne, an employment discrimination suit in the Seventh Circuit. The local Catholic diocese has appealed this case before it’s even been heard by a jury, arguing that it is completely exempt from employment discrimination law. This is not quite the more audacious argument, reported in other media, that the Church is exempt from the entire judicial process; that remains, so far, beyond the pale. But it is a worrying claim nonetheless, one of many testing the boundaries of this new area of law.
The facts of Herx are straightforward. Emily Herx, a well-regarded English teacher at […]
No, the Catholic Church — no church is exempt from any law. Haven’t they read the Constitution? Haven’t they read our history? The Founders and Framers were wise to found a secular nation. They remembered their ancestral history and assure that EVERYONE, whatever their belief (or no “belief”) is free to worship as they desire.